In more than 15 years of solo travel, I’ve been groped three times and dealt with exactly two incidents of real violence—once in Jordan, once in India, both in broad daylight, both with friends nearby. None of that happened because I was careless, and avoiding it isn’t purely a matter of preparation either: safety for …
I left to travel the world for a year way back in 2008, and I never moved back to the States. Instead, I traveled for a decade before settling in Spain since 2018. In all that time, I’ve never lost my passport or had it stolen (knock on wood!)—and it’s not luck. It’s a system. …
As a travel enthusiast, I’ve always sought ways to capture my best travel moments and freeze them in time. As an avid collector of ticket stubs and tour brochures, I even want those mundane details preserved—the name of that hilarious taxi driver who shuttled me from the airport to the city is a worthy contender …
Before I left to travel the world in 2008, I knew I’d need a way to pack more efficiently—I was only carrying a 65L backpack for the whole yearlong trip, so organizing my belongings and maximizing space mattered. That’s when I discovered packing cubes. I hadn’t even left yet, but I thought these lightweight little …
This FAQ is an addendum to the 40,000+ words of questions and answers linked from the How to Travel the World page. These are the smaller topics that might niggle at your mind. We’re not talking flights, itineraries, and accommodation. No, those are the biggies. These are things like when and how to file your …
Finding flights is among the more stressful aspects of planning world travel. When you press purchase on that flight, it represents not only your trip, but hundreds (thousands?!) of dollars, too. There is no fool-proof way to ensure that you always find the lowest price for your flight, but there are certainly tactics and opportunities to …
You’re planning an around the world trip. Congrats! My one-year trip, which I left on in 2008, turned into a life of traveling and living abroad and it transformed my life. My own one-year trip itinerary took me through 15 countries and countless experiences—but narrowing down my dream countries to just 15 was hard. After …
Traveling with debt is possible—I traveled the world for 15 years and for the first handful of years I was paying off a combination of credit card and student loan debt. To travel while in debt, I just had to assess my travel budget and then factor in a monthly debt payment on top of …